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HAROUN Tazieff, the French vulcanologist and former government minister,
has been fined 10 000 francs (about Pounds sterling 1000) for libelling
the geologist Claude Allegre, a high-ranking education ministry adviser.
Tazieff had called him a forger, ‘Claude the Fraud’, a ‘charlatan’ who ‘descended
from Stalin’s favourite geneticist, Lysenko’.

The remarks, in an interview in Penthouse magazine, reflect Tazieff’s
fury dating back 14 years to a quarrel over the chances of a volcano erupting
in Guadeloupe. Tazieff, sure there was no danger, left the French island;
Allegre then arrived, had the local population evacuated and, although there
was no eruption, sacked Tazieff from his post at the Global Physics Institute
for having left the island prematurely.

The judges followed the scientific argument closely, turning down Allegre’s
claim for damages of 10 000 francs because Tazieff ‘had the right to denounce
mistakes and even incompetence’ in the affair.

But they fined the vulcanologist the same amount and made him pay one
franc in symbolic damages to Allegre because his accusation of political
manoeuvring was unproven and his animosity ‘went beyond purely scientific
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